Caffeine Free Diet Coke Hospital of Springfield (TM)

Posted By Damjan DeNoble

One topic of continuing interest to me is the ways in which new social media like Facebook, Twitter, and any other number of online services, are shaping how health care providers do business, and how they are changing the type of business hospitals are to become.

Much like new Health 2.0 innovations are changing the health care landscape by allowing patients unprecedented access to providers, and to medical information (think WebMD), so too are they changing the balance of a hospitals profit sheets. For example, traditionally, when a private hospital opens, it takes years for it to reach full capacity. First, people have to hear about the opening, then they have to find a reason to go, and after the first wave of patients has come, they then, in turn, recruit others. Sometimes, the hospital’s big patient boom comes after accreditation which triggers HMO’s who start referring patients.

Now, however, there are hospitals all over the world using social media to announce their entry into the health market, and to push forward their brands.  This trend is still strongest  in the United States where new hospitals are starting to use social media every day.  A team of surgeons at Henry Ford Hospital systems in Detroit, Michigan recently went so far as to provide a live Twitter of a heart surgery; and, ItsAHospital Blog, also a product of the Henry Ford Hospital system, has been providing a play by play of events as it opens a new hospital in the town of West Bloomfield.  This sort of marketing is allowing hospitals to develop reputations across a wider region, faster,  and to faster fill up with patients , as well.  It is not hard to imagine how a hospital set to open ten years from now,  and using a comprehensive social media based strategy, could very well reach (and/or surpass) optimum operating capacity in months (as opposed to years).  In terms of profit strategy, this kind of change will mean a lot (obviously)

The cool stuff is going to happen when hospitals start using social media to turn themselves into entertainment providers (a live tweet of a surgery is certainly educational but it got into the news because its also entertaining).  And when this happens, doctors and hospitals are going to become celebrities.     When that day comes, innovative hospitals and their teams – just like stadium arenas and the teams who play in them, performing in front of audiences night after night- will start to carry the names of sponsors.  So, instead of, lets say, “Henderson Hospital,” we are going to see names a lot closer to “Henderson Caffeine Free, Diet Cola Hospital.”

It’s not hard to see it going there.

For one, hospitals have never been that far removed from commercial media since companies are well aware that the hospital environment provides a lot of opportunity  to send a focused marketing messages (think patient waiting rooms), and the inherent qualities of a good health provider are of interest to companies who wish to be perceived as having such traits by a sort of virtue through association.

For another, private hospitals already try to make themselves look cool and fun.  There are more pearly white smiles on hospital web pages than most other places online.  And what is entertainment if not cool and fun?  If it is not a stretch to go from web 1.o webpages with smiling doctors and patients, to web 2.0 doctor’s and hospital CEO’s blogs and podcasts, then it’s not a stretch to imagine a hospital that is one day concerned as much about it’s twitter count and Youtube hits, as it is about the patients that come through its doors.  If done right, patient care doesn’t have to suffer.

To reemphasize my position – I don’t consider this scenario far fetched. I find it much more surprising that entire governments have already started to project their image to international audiences through their best private health care providers. (What’s a better mascot for a country then a safe, reliable, and trustworthy health care provider? Probably Nothing)

The real question for me is how many hospitals out there are planning on doing something like this already?  And, will it be America or someone in Asia that innovates first?